Cro Startup officially launched ICT Business | TechBuzz

Cro Startup, the recently established Croatian umbrella association for startups, organized a one-day event in Algebra yesterday to mark the official start of its activities. The event included many key people from the Croatian startup scene, and the keynote speaker was Eve Peeterson, president of Startup Estonia, the umbrella Estonian startup organization. In a conversation with Marijana Šarolić Robić, Cro Startup Vice President, Eve revealed how Estonia has become the country with the largest number of unicorns per capita in the world and what we can learn from their trial and error.

After the conversation with Eva, she was joined by part of the board of directors of the association: Hajdi Ćenan, president, Darko Jovišić, VP startup community, and Božidar Pavlović, VP investments. They commented on the current situation on the Croatian startup scene, why the association was launched as such and what it will focus on in the coming period: reducing regulatory barriers and improving the tax framework for startups, strengthening the startup community through its gathering and sharing experiences. pooling the knowledge and resources needed by startups, and positioning Croatia on the international startup scene.

In the rest of the program we heard many experiences and tips from the startup world. Francesco Borgnosano from gaming startup Huddle conveyed to the audience the reasons why they immediately opened a headquarters in America, even though as many as 80% of operations take place from Croatia, and immediately focused on that market.

Hrvoje Ćosić from Aircash, Anto Širić from sportreact and Matija Žulj from Agrivi, in an interview with Maja Brkljačić, Cro Startup VP education and EU funds, commented on how much has changed in the last 10 years and compared the situation in starting and running a startup then even today.

After the panel on 3 generations of Croatian startups, Božidar Pavlović touched on the topic of financing, but through the prism of thinking about when startups should and should not accept the offered conditions, and what are some key points to consider when raising funds.

Daniel Ackermann from Degordian, in a conversation with Heidi Chenan, shared the experiences of spin-offs of two products from the existing service business, how different it is to run an agency and product-oriented business and what they learned from starting Mediatoolkit 10 years ago and applied to launching a very fresh Stethoscope.

We also learned more about the crypto world from Vedran Vukman from Revut, especially what NFTs are and what new and unexpected business models are emerging based on this technology.

The event concluded with a very important topic, how important it is to try and, even if you fail, the experience and lessons learned are invaluable for some future projects. Zijad Redžić from the Serengeti talked about this, to whom the unsuccessful experience of starting his own startup a few years ago is now immensely useful in his work.